In the previous chapter, Ellen G. White discusses the rise of the first king of Israel, the fall of divine leadership, and the lessons that can be learned from them. Chapter 60 shows just how wrong humans can be. Israel was still at war. Saul, the current reigning king had led a small army simultaneously with his newly introduced son, Jonathan. Consequently, both battles had turned out to be bad ideas in the long run, foreshadowing Saul’s eligibility as a leader. They continued to beat down one conglomerate –that being the Ammonites– while the other, the Philistines, rose to action. They were able to station themselves dead centre in Israel. Thanks to this, they had control over the country; even taking away the right to manufacture weaponry to ensure …show more content…
Thirty thousand chariots, six thousand horsemen, and masses of foot soldiers littered the seashore of Micmash. This made Saul’s army look like a litter of bunnies, only to increase the fear of the already terrified Israelites. Many fled, and those who stayed still hid themselves away. It just goes to show how lost one might feel without the hope that a divine creator watches over them.
God even gave Saul a chance at remembering who was really in charge here. Samuel, the beloved prophet told Saul to wait seven days before he attacked. When Samuel came back, he would offer sacrifices to God as peace offerings. But Saul was human. It came to pass that the seven days were up, and Kevin Tran was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t reassure his army nor himself that God would keep them safe. He didn’t do anything to change this outlook either.
In many ways, we’ve also been in situations like this. We’ve had those days where it just doesn’t feel like God’s listening. Or that He’s late to the party. We don’t even want to bring ourselves back up in fear and trepidation of a harder fall. In Saul’s case, it could also be out of arrogance to how high he made his pedestal. He was a king after
Saul Indian Horse was removed from his family environment and taken to a Residential School where anything relating to his culture was forbidden. Saul had no family, and no belongings from his home. The toll that this experience has on a child is very harsh, and is difficult to recover from. “In what seened like an instant, the world I had known was replaced with an ominous black cloud”(Wagamese 47). This quotation shows how quickly the environment he was put in became unwelcoming. Indian Horse went from a welcoming and loving family environment to one where he was not allowed to be himself and was forced to comply with the rules the church has set. The sense of family is explored at the residential school because the children there did not have any. There were siblings that may have gone together but when the Nuns shaved their heads and removed their cultural clothing everyone became unrecognizable. There was a sense of understanding that all the children had though, each one of the kids
In the first chapter of God Behaving Badly, David Lamb argues that God is unfairly given a bad reputation. He claims these negative perceptions are fueled by pop culture and lead many to believe the lie that the God of the Old Testament is angry, sexist, racist, violent, legalistic, rigid, and distant. These negative perceptions, in turn, affect our faith. Ultimately, Lamb seeks to demonstrate that historical context disproves the presumptuous aforementioned. In addition, he defends his position by citing patterns of descriptions that characterize God throughout the Old Testament. “Our image of God will directly affect how we either pursue or avoid God. If we believe that the God of the Old Testament is really harsh, unfair and cruel, we won’t want anything to do with him” (Lamb 22). Clearly, they way Christians choose to see God will shape their relationship with Him.
Hindson, E. E., & Yates, G. E. (2012). The Essence of the Old Testament: A survey. Nashville, Tenn: B & H Academic.
Background: The history of Saul is thought to have ended at the battle at Mount Gilboa, but summarized as follows: after falling in battle the evil spirit that God set upon him became his Beast, in horror and shame he pulled himself from the wall Beth-shan and fled into the night. History would have you believe that his body had been burned. Convinced that he had fully fallen out out of God’s grace, he turned to prayer and a path of redemption. He had hoped that meditation, prayer along with other abnegation techniques could quell the Beast, however nothing could for long.
God reduced the size of Gideon’s army for the people that were with him were too many, so God reduced the size of Gideon’s army to three hundred men (Judges 7:4-7). Gideon’s army consisted of thirty-two thousand men. But compared to the army of the Midianites this was a small army, nevertheless God showed up and said “you have too many”. God can bring great things to pass through a “little”.
The history of white bread is more important than we think. I will be reviewing the book White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf written by Aaron Bobrow-Strain. This book is about how white bread historical impacted the food production during the industrial revolution. Bobrow- Strain main argument is that the industrial revolution has changed the way food is produced and consumed. The main focus of the was on the production of white bread and how it has changed over time. Also, he look at the changes in the society and how that changed the production of white bread. He starts of being explaining bread was made in the homes, then bakeries, then
Though greater in number and equipment than their adversaries, the Syrians were defeated by the Maccabees. Antiochus sent out another expedition which also was defeated. He realized that only by sending a powerful army could he hope to defeat Judah and his brave fighting men. An army consisting of more than 40,000 men swept the land under the leadership of two commanders, Nicanor and Gorgiash. When Judah and his brothers heard of that, they exclaimed: "Let us fight unto death in defense of our souls and our Temple!" The people assembled in Mitzpah, where Samuel, the prophet of old, had offered prayers to G‑d. After a series of battles the war was
After conquering northern Israel in 722 B.C.E., the Assyrians engendered centuries of political intrigue and laid the foundation for future unscrupulous kingdoms and idolatrous people.1 Once the Babylonian empire overthrew Josiah, the King of Judah, Habakkuk began to compose a prophetic book, questioning the ways of God. Above all, Habakkuk could not comprehend why “the evil circumvented the just”2; he thought that the impiety of the world did not correlate with a supposedly just God.3 Throughout his narrative, this biblical prophet came to understand that “the just man, because of his faith, shall live” (Hb 2,4). Eventually discovering that righteousness and faith in God lead to justice, Habakkuk cried out to the people of Judah through his prophetic words, assuring that divine intervention would eradicate the wickedness and oppression.
The pastor was somebody that Simplicius turned to when the Hermit was no longer there to help. “The troopers were ready to depart and were leading the pastor on the rope” (46). This showed that the soldiers had no problem with slaughtering anyone who came in their way because to soldiers orders were orders and if the soldiers fulfilled their duty then they would be able to move up within their own caste on The Great Chain of Being. The text reveals that the living conditions were not safe for anyone whether you were a servant, monk, messenger, merchant or farmer. These people are faced with having to change their whole religious mindset and practice the religion that the ruler
To speak of the Hebrew Scripture is to speak of story, a story stretching from the very beginning of time to only a few centuries before the beginning of the Common Era. It is to speak of richness of content, of purpose and of reality and to engross oneself in an overarching narrative that, depending on your personal convictions, continues to the present day. Within this richness is found a wide variety of different events and experience, told through a series of genre ranging from foundational myth to apocalypse, law giving to poetry, genealogy to wisdom and many more. Within this diversity however, three broad sections can be discerned that speak to a shared purpose and content, these are the sections of Law, Prophecy and Writings. It is the purpose of this talk then to examine each of these sections, identifying their commonality and differences and exploring why they exists as discernable sections. To achieve this, we will be led through a brief survey of each section, delving into the content and purpose of each with reference to the others. In addition to this we will also explore the three genres of foundational myth, type scene and wisdom that are found in these sections, discussing their features and how they have been used in specific circumstances as a part of the greater biblical narrative.
...ill leave them to be destroyed in the hands of the false prophets and corrupt leaders of the land. God tells them that he really does not want it to come to this, because the passage ends with a prophecy about what will become of the worthless shepherd. I think this is a message to false prophets that eventually no one will believe them, and also to the leaders or kings that they will lose all of their power and military strength. God reminds them that he really is helping protect them from the full effect of their sins even if they don’t realize it. In other words, things could be a lot worse, but God loves humans so much that he won’t let it get worse. The general message is for the people to clean up their act and repent so these bad things won’t happen.
The book of first and second Kings is a continuation of the cyclical cycle that Israel follows throughout the Old Testament. The Israelites are unfaithful in their relationship to God, they are consequently disciplined by God through oppression, consequently they petition God for divine assistance, and God then sends a deliverer. In II Kings 4, the current deliverer for God’s people is a man named Elisha. In this particular scene of the Old Testament, readers are able to see Elisha’s miraculous power given by God in a time of Israel’s disobedience and discipline. This exegesis will explore the social and historical surroundings of the story, the contextual meaning behind the text, and its purpose in the Bible.
In this brief book, the presumed author Solomon dictates the idea that everything we do, outside of a God-centered worldview, is futile and unfulfilling. To begin with, there is some debate as to whom the actual author of Ecclesiastes is, but the overwhelming majority of critics deem the authorship of this book to Solomon, King David’s son, based on textual clues. It is also generally accepted that this book was written late in King Solomon’s life based on the text in chapter 12:1-7. Ecclesiastes is similar in style to several Biblical poetic books as well as in context to various ancient Near Eastern texts, which demonstrate that practical wisdom is of little value in the real world. Having been blessed with great wisdom, Solomon would have been a prime candidate to explain the futility of wisdom (Hill & Walton 458-459).
First Samuel 8:5; 19-20 records Israel’s request for a king developed out their desire to be like the nations around them, thus placing them on the “broad road.” They desired a king to fight their battles, to establish a government, and to rule over them. During the time of the Judges, there was no central government, no one to fight for them, except God of course. To make matters worse the
The Israelites were on their way into the land God had promised them and they encountered many battles on their way. The Gibeonites were a very large and powerful city. But they were afraid because the five kingdoms of Adoni-Zedek, king of Jerusalem, Hoham, king of Hebron, Priam, king of Jarmuth, Japhia, king of Lachish, and Debir, king of Eglon: which surrounded them were ganging up against them. So, the Gibeonites tricked Joshua into a peace treaty because they had seen what Joshua and his army had done to Jericho and its surrounding cities and they knew that God was with them.